Synergy
PMI North India Chapter
Collaborating Project Management for High Performance Business Insight
TTTTT….2222…………………………………..……………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………….. July-Sept 2011~ Newsletter
Issue: 2
this issue PM Key Attributes for Project ... P.2 Approvals for your Projects … P.3 Effective communications for RCA... P.4 Project Management Vs Program... P.8 Communications it pays to log... P.11 Project Manager Styles….P.12 Difficult Team Member… P.14 About PMI North India Chapter…P.15 Welcome suggestions…P.16
From the Editor‟s Desk Editorial Team is thankful to everyone for an overwhelmed response and appreciation to the First edition of North India Chapter Newsletter. It is an honor for entire Editorial team along with Project Management Fraternity to release and publish the Second Edition of “SYNERGY” on this day. The day of 5th September has its own significance in everyone‟s life i.e. Teacher‟s Day. It is also birthday of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakhrishnan a scholar, teacher and second president of Republic of India. It‟s a tribute to him and all teachers‟ for their selfless contribution towards building our society which helps shaping our career to become a great manager. Project Manager is required to wear the Hat of a Teacher to be a great mentor and coach of a team they lead. This is the time where we can pay back to our society all the knowledge and patients to handle the tasks, what we have learnt from our teachers during school/college days. Remember how our teachers‟ shaped our growth from our play school till we enter into corporate life teaching us moral lessons. We need to utilize our lessons related to morality and ethics as much as we utilize our technical knowledge. Moral lessons learnt help us to follow the code of conduct and ethical path during our professional life. During professional journey everyone encounters conflicting scenarios. One has to judge with best of one‟s ability without crossing the ethical periphery. I would like to stress that being ethical and maintaining transparency builds credibility and integrity. Happy Reading! Regards Piyush Govil PMP® Vice President - Communications PMI North India Chapter Save Trees, Save Earth
PM Key Attributes for Project Success- Share, Analyze, Pre-empt and Focus By - Hemant Seigell PMP® “Smart Project Managers are the important pillars of orchestrating support from Initiation to closing phase of any project across industry. They are like „cart wheel‟ of any project dimensions who keep different teams/entities bind together. They do this while taking the pressure of the overall project constraints/stakeholders, yet pushing for desired results in demanding situations. They have a cohesive goal in mind to achieve best results for end customer satisfaction (Internal or External)”.
Project Manager ensures that the cart wheel keeps moving
4- Key Dimensions for Every PM
Share
Analyze
Encourage and share ideas from all for best results
Pre - empt
Analyze the challenge and keep the project running using all Knowledge Assets for seamless functioning to meet project goals.
Focus
Try to pre-empt the risk and apply mitigation plans for least risk damage
Keep the final project deliverable in mind right from start till final target is reached, Bang-On.
About Hemant: Professional with 16+ years of rich experience into diverse Consumer finance/ Lending /Operations/Risk Mgmt across Forex-Travel related Services, BPMS, Consumer Banking, NBFC, Management Consulting, Housing Finance companies in BFSI domain and having successfully managed multi-product environment /Strategic business critical launch projects across varied functional areas: Certified PMP,Trained - Six Sigma Green Belt & ISO 9001- 2000 Internal Auditor having worked in Asia, Australia & US geographies.
Save Trees, Save Earth
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Approvals for your projects – Increasing your Chances! By- G Ravi PMP® and Kumar Saurabh PMP® Projects are essential for the existence of any projectised setup. Following stages are involved to initiate a project and for obtaining approval for the project:
Stage 1: Internal Assessment Proper SWOT analysis should be performed. Due diligence must be done. Have faith on the feasibility and workability of the project.
Stage 2: Sponsor / External Stakeholder Analysis Target people / organization who identify with the project. The sponsor must be in line with the organization‟s mission. The probability of sponsor acceptance must be high. The sponsor should have a previous association with projects of similar nature. Sponsor should have a strong financial will to sponsor the project in totality.
Stage 3: The Rendezvous Create a cordial atmosphere by exchanging pleasantries and thanking sponsors for their time & effort. Be assertive and specific while explaining the project. Always exude confidence. Be optimistic, yet realistic. Don't exaggerate the benefits but provide the real picture. Explain the project in a presentable graphic format with facts and figures. Ensure that the session is interactive and does not end in a monologue. Assure the sponsor of a successful outcome with a clear timeline. Highlight benefits, of the project, for the sponsor. Be vigilant of positive signals from the sponsor and immediately capitalize on the same.
Happy Project Execution!
About Ravi Project Manager CSC, he is PMP and ITIL Certified Professional having 11+ years of experience in the areas of Project Management, Service Delivery, Process Management, Operations Management, Client Servicing, Quality Assurance & Team Management.He is endowed with superior Relationship Management skills which have been fruitfully utilized while interacting with esteemed clients around the globe.
About Saurabh Sr. Manager Samsung Engineering having 15 yrs of exp., in project management related to Refinery, Pipelines, Tankages, Oil & Gas and various Process Plants. He is an alumnus of from MANIT, Bhopal and has also done his Masters in Construction Management from NICMAR. He is a PMP and Six Sigma e-Green Belt Certified and Undergone Configuration Training in SAP R/3 (SD Module).Throughout his career he has held key positions with some of the reputed organizations including L&T Ltd., Reliance Industries Ltd. and Punj Lloyd Ltd.
P3 Save Trees, Save Earth
Effective Communication for RCA and Understanding Communication Style By - Pauline Aloysius PMP® One of the key values for a technical support and marketing team is its Customers whether it could be internal or external. For a technical support team which is not being in the frontline becomes more crucial in satisfying and meeting the demands of the internal customer who indirectly contribute in meeting the needs of external customers. The core concepts of customer satisfaction survey are to measure quality of solutions and timely communication provided by support team to the customers.
Quote By- Edward Hodnett "If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the ABC of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems."
The purpose of this document is to emphasis the need of Effective Communication for Root Cause Analysis and Understanding Communication Style of individual and team. The whitepaper illustrates the 5-why RCA approach from Six Sigma DMAIC process and Johari Window model to understand the communication style
How do we ask? How do we communicate? The information and ideas exchanged flawlessly in both directions between the sender and the receiver. It becomes more effective with good preparation. In this case shouldn‟t we be prepared for effective communication for a flawless interaction? Yes. According to PMBOK, Communications planning involves identifying the information and needs of the stakeholders. This includes determining what needs to be communicated, to whom, when, what method adopted and how frequency. In a Technical Support team, a proactive communication approach is adopted by the team;
Identifying the Stakeholders (ex. Customer, Project Team, etc) Collecting the requirements of the stakeholders (ex. Issues, problems reported in the call) Mode of communication (E-mail, GIM, Telephone) When, what and the frequency
The communications management is not a new topic in study of project management; the concept has been discussed in-depth in many books. The objective of this white paper is to briefly explain about outcome of Effective Communication for Root Cause Analysis and Understanding the Communication Style.
Effective Communication Effective communication is achieved when the information is conveyed flawlessly and received without distortion. During a communication, each message is encoded by the sender and decoded by the receiver based on the receiver‟s education, experience, language and culture. Many times the communication is not one-way. In this case it involves good communication and listening skills by the sender and the receiver.
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Sender / Receive Parameters
Sender Message Encoded
Para lingual Receiver Message Decoded
Nonverbal Feedback Active listening
From Sender
By Receiver
The sender should encode a message carefully, determining the communications method used to send it, and confirm that the message is understood correctly.
The receiver should decode a message carefully, and confirm the message is understood correctly.
Nonverbal: About 55 percent of all communications are non-verbal (ex. Based on physical mannerisms).
Active Listening: The receiver confirms she is listening, confirms agreement or asks for clarification.
Para lingual: Pitch and tone of voice also helps to convey a message.
Para lingual: Same as mentioned in „From Sender‟ column.
Feedback: Clarifying the message for instance, “Do you understand what I have explained”
Feedback: Clarifying the message for instance, “I am not sure I understand, can you repeat what you have said?”
Project Management – lighter side
“Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when!” ®
Overhead by Kumar Saurabh, PMP
Save Trees, Save Earth
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Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Technique is used in identifying the origin of the problem and also the underlying factors that causes the problem. It is one of the popular DMAIC problem-solving methodologies used widely in Six Sigma projects. There are 5 stages of analyzing the root cause:
Step1
Step2
Step3
Step4
Step5
Step One: Define the Problem. It should be a problem statement describing clearly a single problem. Writing the issue helps you formalize the problem and describe it completely. Step Two: Collect Data. The second level is to collect the factors that contributed to the problem. Ask why the problem happens and write the reasons for that problem. Step Three: Identify Possible Causes. During this stage, we try to figure out what are the possible causes for this problem. There can be more than one cause for each reason. Step Four: Identify the Root Cause. As we start looking at the root for each causal factor, the answer to one of the „whyâ€&#x; question to a cause would become the root cause. Step Five: Recommend and Implement Solutions. Appropriate resolution or workaround is suggested to prevent the issue/problem from happening. In a technical support Centre a detailed process of RCA is done, together with the internal customer, experts, front-line staff, R&D, technical and product marketing etc. To achieve the RCA process successfully we need to focus on the aspect of communication with different people to get the correct and appropriate feedback related to issues, occurrences, impact etc.
Food for thought
How many times any individual refresh concepts about ethics? -Served by Piyush Govil Save Trees, Save Earth
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Communication for RCA When a support center receives a request for technical support, it is at the receiving end. To understand the information correctly we have to demonstrate active listening and good questioning skills. Active listening is more than just hearing the words or reading the message. It involves the power of observation as well as understanding the message which was conveyed, whereas Questioning techniques is to use right questions to gather correct information. Listening and questioning techniques are communication skills, when used actively could improve productivity and quality of relationship with others. Here is an example of this approach; on how support Centre reacts when it receives a call or issue reported by customer? Do we jump in and start treating it? Or do we analyze and gather more information which may lead to the actual problem? Yes, when we receive support request we have to read between the lines and try to understand the complete message like, business impact, priority, criticality, customer tier etc. To put it simply, support and SLA management consists mostly of gathering, organizing, analyzing, confirming and solving the issues. The ability to manage will only be as good as the information received to resolve it. When solving complex issues, before embarking into investigating the call, we need to ask clarifying questions and gather necessary information from the sender, handle it appropriately to determine the root cause. Questioning Techniques By using the right questions in a particular situation, the whole range of problem solving process could be improved. There are several types of questioning techniques which can be applied based on the situation and crafting the questions appropriately to improve the ability to communicate. Questions are a powerful way of: Learning Relationship building Managing and coaching Avoiding misunderstandings Diffusing a heated situation Persuading people Skillful questioning needs to be matched by careful listening so that we can understand what people really mean with their answers. Listening Techniques Active listening is the other component of communication; which means understanding and acknowledging what the sender is saying: both facts and feelings. It allows the listener and the speaker to relate, exchange information, and reach understanding. One of the critical aspects of active listening is that it's a conscious decision whether to listen or to do something else. Distractions caused either by noise in the environment such as: the speaker's use of language or the speaker's tone of delivery can reduce the listening capability. If active listening is not practiced, the questioning strategy will fail because salient points would be missed in the conversation or ignored in both verbal and nonverbal cues.
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Key Points Therefore to understand well about the problem; asking the right questions followed by active listening is at the heart of effective communications for root cause analysis. Moreover it also helps to:
Manage problems and issues more effectively, which improves productivity Gather correct information and learn more Follow up products and regions, and eventually build stronger relationships Ability to influence, persuade and negotiate, and Concluding Part Avoid conflict and misunderstandings. in next edition of “SYNERGY” About Pauline About 12 years of experience in Info-Telecom industry, covering a wide range of roles in R&D, Project Management, Quality Assurance and Technical Product Support. Proven track record to resolve customer issues technically and strategically with depth and breadth with good satisfaction rating. Contribute on continuous improvement of Support Management process to be in line with Telecom BU strategy and facilitate different support services based on the customer segmentation.
Project Management vs. Program Management By Tathagat Varma PMP® Program Management is often seen as the next logical step for seasoned project managers looking to take on bigger challenges. While project management is more about managing within boundaries of a project and gate keeping it against anything and everything that threatens the status quo, program management is typically all about breaking those very boundaries and managing across them by taking up anything and everything that threatens the status quo. Here I will examine how they differ in its approach on two important aspects – scope management and people management. Scope Management: Projects A project‟s success depends on its ability to retain focus against all odds. Once a project scope is defined, its estimates made, resources allocated and commitments made, the project manager is pretty much focused on gate keeping everything else out of the scope lest the project success is threatened.
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In reality, most projects would have a CCB, or a Change Control Board, of some levels of formal authority, there is still a tendency to bulk up the entire requirements in first-pass and do as much as possible in one breath irrespective of how much time it takes and whether the final outcome is acceptable to the customer or not. While most of the traditional world still likes this model for various reasons, software development community identified this as a bottleneck and created the suite of socalled „agile methodologies‟. “Agile Methodology” exploits software‟s ability to incorporate late changes to specs without seriously endangering the project or its deliverables. Still, at a high level, a project must work around a reasonably stable set of requirements to ring-fence itself against any potential changes to the „core‟ of a project – the premise being how can you build a successful product on a shaky and wobbly foundation. After all, don‟t we pay product managers to do a better job of defining those requirements upfront rather than changing their mind later in the project and calling it as customer change request to cover up what they failed to think of in the first place! Surely, everyone understands changes in workflow or bells and whistles, but I am talking about the core architecture – the fundamental DNA of a product that must be understand before any further allocation of time, money or resources is made. So, clearly, scope is sacrosanct to a project. Scope Management: Programs A program is a different beast. As the highest level of body chartered to translate an organization‟s strategic intent to reality, it can‟t box itself inside any boundaries of defined or undefined scope. Anything that could impact a program‟s ability to accrue full „benefits‟ envisaged from it must be taken up. While in theory, a program must have a defined scope to plan its activities and resources around its deliverables; in practice it is not so trivial. Any reasonably large program has sufficient number of moving parts, uncertainties, conflicting requirements and rapidly changing priorities. It is very typical in a program for the component project managers to carve out their pieces very sharply. A lesser reported fact of life is that developer‟s motivation to work in newer and sexier technology often dictates the choice behind a project taking up (or refusing to take up) a given problem. Program organizational structure and governance plays a very important role in ensuring that component projects are not only cleanly defined, they also identify inter-group dependencies and secure commitments to address them. To that end, a project might safeguard itself by rejecting an inter-group request, but eventually the program needs to address it! Similarly, a project manager might complete the work within her boundaries but it takes much more for the program to be „done‟, let alone be successful. I have seen many situations where project managers would be so focused on their project that they won‟t recognize that unless the program was successful as a single entity, their individual progress was meaningless. This could get aggravated when teams are geographically or organizationally dispersed. However, none of those can hide or discount the fact that a program is only as successful as it ability to influence things that might not be in its line of control but whose impact is definitely in a project‟s line of success, especially if those things were to backfire. While a project is like a fortress that must protect itself against all invasions to survive and eventually be successful, a program is more like a university, a rose garden, or a mission – they all deal in „soft power‟ and maximize the ROI of their mission by keeping their doors open and by teaming up with their potential adversaries. Food for thought
Is there a need to go through code of conduct policy time to time? -Served by Piyush Govil Save Trees, Save Earth
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People Management: Projects A project manager in a functional organization wields significant „positional power‟ and thus has very high ability to influence team members‟ behavior. While today‟s organizations are highly flat and democratic, there is still an asymmetric balance of power, for the manager who writes your focal and annual salary revisions also potentially has the power to decide when you should update your resume! Surely we have come a long way in management-worker power-sharing from Taylor and Ford era, make no mistake that there is no such thing as a perfectly symmetric world where a manager and her team member have equal rights. Thus, a project manager has much higher ability to define the work and assign people to it, as she feels appropriate. She also has a much higher level of responsibility towards training and career development of her team members, and being the closest face of management to the team, she is the official spokesperson of the upper management. A team will likely listen more to her than to the CEO. She must balance two opposing sets of expectations that, if not aligned properly, can set the project on fire. To that end, people management for a project management must be one of the toughest job. People Management: Programs In high contrast, a program manager manages at boundaries of participating organization in a highly matrix environment, and hence must manage by influence and not by any formal authority. In a software team, a program manager needs to get Development, QA, Product Management, Usability, Documentation, Marketing, and several other functions on the same page. In most organizations, they are organized along the functional lines and hence report to a solid-line manager in the same skill-set pool rather than program manager. Given that many of these resources might be timesharing on a program, their eventual loyalties are still with their respective line managers and hence a program manager can only rely on collaboration and influence as the key measures to get everyone on boarded. In some cases, there might even be a conflict between a component‟s goals and the program‟s goals and if such issues remain unresolved, the only recourse to make the program successful might be to move the problem up the command chain. Still, there is a big value in managing large and complex endeavors as a program, for it allows an organization to manage its resources and inter-group dependencies and conflicts in a more systemic and transparent manner. Some of the best program managers I have seen were not the ones who stopped managing the interfaces, but went over and above what their jobs required. They established a direct contact with key team members in component projects and created an alternate informal channel to validate project risks and plans, and to feel the pulse of the organization. They would do it very unobtrusively without creating any friction between the line manager and them. How does your organization view these two important functions?
About Tathagat
Sr. Member IEEE, PMP, PRINCE2TM Registered Practitioner, CSM, heads Corporate PMO and Business Operations at Yahoo! Software Development India. He is responsible for managing strategic horizontal programs across the India R&D centre. Tathagat has an MS in Computer Science and exec MBA in HR. Over the past 20 years, he has been engaged in product development with Defense Research with Indian Government, and subsequently with Siemens Telecom, Philips Medical Systems and Digital Networks divisions, Huawei Technologies and NetScout Systems prior to joining at Yahoo. His core expertise is largescale product development, program management, software engineering and general management.
Save Trees, Save Earth
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Communication – it pays to log By - Prabhu N. Jha PMP® A project manager spend almost 90% of time communicating, makes it most demanding activity in project management. Still communication management does not get the kind of attention it deserves in all the process groups of the project. Let's look in the practical aspect of it. We live in the information age; communication is revolutionized in many ways. We have many different technologies for communication - email, mobile phone, meetings, video conferencing, fax, mails and more it‟s easy to communicate today than what it used to be 10 years ago. A project communication management plan provides the details of who, what, when. Keeping a more open approach to include more than one communication technology in preference can give added degree of flexibly and can save lots of redundant and ineffective communication. In today's world when multiple communication technologies are at our fingertip, technology preference is easier and convenient to stakeholders. The need of the hour is to update the communication management plan promptly. Loss of communication due to any reason can add risks in projects. In a larger project where responsibility of communication lies with group of people think about the situation that a risk response owner is not able to act when risk occurred just because risk status report went to a fax machine instead of phone call or something similar. We tend to use the other communication technology based on the need of the time. Few steps can be done to mitigate it. During communication management planning the Project Manager creates communication matrix he will record who, what, when and other details, also should record three preference of communication technology, first two should be mandatory. Mention the primary, secondary and tertiary methods of communication and maintain a log of communication. This may sound a bit odd like it‟s done on warship or submarine. But communication log is a very good tool and can serve multiple purposes. Update the log on daily basis or as demanded by the project. This log will keep track of which communication technology was used from the preference of communication plan, success/failure, summary, date/time, sender etc. Log will give up to date record of current communication in the Project. Project Manager can identify the deviation in communication management plan by carefully analyzing the log. And if there is any deviation, it can be corrected. Also, communication log can help Project Manager measure the performance of the communication management plan in place. During the closing process communication log can help in creating lessons learned and update Organizational Process Asset database.
About Prabhu Senior Project Manager with JK Technosoft Ltd. (a JK Group company in software consultancy and services). He is having over 14 years of experience in software development, consultancy and delivery management. He has been engaged with clients like CISCO, UPS, Nestle, American Express and others. He is Bachelor in Computer Science and Engineering .To take Project Management on a serious note and as profession he earned his PMP certification in year 2009. He is continuously contributing in his organization on many best practice and process improvement initiative to increase productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
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The Project Manager Styles & their Impact on the project ®
By- Maneesh Dutt - PMP Continued from First Edition of “SYNERGY”
and
URGENT THE FIRE FIGHTING PM
IMPORTANT
NOT IMPORTANT
Q1
Nirmallya Kar – IPMA – Level D
NOT URGENT THE EFFECTIVE PM Q2
THE INEFFECTIVE PM
THE RESOURCE WASTER
Q3
Q4
Referring to the famous ImportanceUrgency matrix [1], it is easy to label the project manager styles into the four quadrants.
THE INEFFECTIVE PROJECT MANAGER: This Project Manager is a complete opposite of the effective Project Manager. His ability to do unimportant tasks with a sense of urgency can derail a project from its intended end objective. He is the one who does ineffective things efficiently this kind of a Project Manager would have tendency to operate within a narrow band of his comfort zone working on micro tasks rather than the bigger mission of the project. Along the project cycle let us look at how his behavior impacts the project: PROJECT INITIATION & FEASIBILITY The Ineffective Project Manager would normally deal with the start of the project in a superficial manner. The PM may ignore using the Project Initiation as an opportunity to build a rapport with his team and the final direction of the project. Additionally the PM would not be inclined to ask the right questions clarifying the end result desired from the project; rather he would be satisfied with asking questions for which he already has the answers. An ineffective project manager may stick to the known and would not encourage innovative solutions at any stage of the project. PROJECT EXECUTION The Q3 Project Manager would invariably end up making a project plan with incorrect prioritization of tasks. The execution environment would be built around a number of trivial meetings and unending reviews with little value addition. The PM may not give due importance to formal learning‟s or encourage risks taking behavior during the Project Execution hence impacting the growth of the team. At the same time micro management could also be another attribute of such a PM giving no sense of empowerment to the team. PROJECT CLOSURE In his urgency to start a next project the Ineffective Project Manager may completely skip the Closure phase or do it at a quick pace where it renders it ineffective. He may purposely avoid bringing up sticky issues for discussion during the closure phase which may challenge his style of functioning. Learning and development would almost be treated as taboo topic in such teams. The recognitions, if any, awarded by him may not reflect the reality of the contribution by the team members.
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THE RESOURCE WASTER PROJECT MANAGER: The Resource Waster Project manager like the effective project manager is working on “Not Urgent” activities. But the big difference is that these activities are not important to the project mission thus not adding value to the desired end result. Thus project resources do get utilized but with missing or delayed the project outputs/deliverables. Along the project cycle let us look at how this PM behaves during the three phases of the PL described above: PROJECT INTIATION & FEASIBILITY The Q4 Project manager by nature would shun or spend the least possible time in the Feasibility study. He looks at the feasibility study as an activity which delays his execution of the project. Hence right from the start he has limited clarity of the project deliverable. He does not have the clear visibility of the outcome of the project and as consequence risks failure of the project right from the start. Even if the Project manager spends time in this quadrant it would be working on the wrong set of priorities from the customer‟s requirements. PROJECT EXECUTION The importance of this phase of the Project is that the resources are consumed at the maximum possible rate working towards the predicted end of the project. The Resource Waster PM with his wrong set of priorities ensures that he is consuming resources which are not aligned to the project deliverables. He responds to the varying PM situations more from his fancies and emotions rather than keeping the big picture of the Project end in mind. The PM does not display any sense of urgency on the various project activities and as is usually low on managing commitments. As a result he slowly loses the confidence of not only his team but also his management. Amongst the least of his priorities is building a relationship with all the stakeholders. PROJECT CLOSURE: The Resource Waster PM may understand the importance of Project closure phase however because of his style of functioning he would normally lack the courage and confidence to execute this activity. Even while doing a formal closure analysis he would limit himself to the surface or unimportant tasks of the project without attempting an understanding on why some things went wrong or right along the project lifecycle. He would invariably forget to recognize and appreciate the contribution of all the stakeholders towards the project success. At best his focus would be limited to a very basic understanding of the project process and tools.
About Maneesh Gr Manager, Central Engg & Consultancy, and Mgmt Representative for STMicroelectronics, he is responsible for the deployment of ISO standards for Quality, Information Security, Health & Safety and additionally for IP Protection for ST India operations. He has ~17 yrs of exp. in the field of Project Management working with various organizations in India. He is a certified master trainer for advanced PM practices courses and has conducted more than 5500 man-hrs of PM trainings at various ST sites within and outside India. Save Trees, Save Earth
About Nirmallya
Reference: “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” By Stephen R. Covey.
Sr. Program Manager, FTM/CCDS STMicroelectronics, he is also a Lead Auditor for ISO/TS at the site and certified IPMA-D project manager. He is an M.Tech from IITD, with approx 16 yrs plus of VLSI industry experience and since last 10 years has been handling the Project Management activity in Department with a strong interaction with site PMO office. He is also a trainer for basic & advanced Project Management courses at the site. P13
Difficult Project Team Member – Reality Bites! By- G Ravi PMP® and Kumar Saurabh PMP® Project Execution is completely dependent on people who are dedicated, believe in common goal and have synchronized objectives. However the reality is that every project has member(s) who may have a different perspective / different approach / different agenda. For successful execution of the project within the parameters of cost, time, quality & scope, it is essential that such members are identified early and counseling is done as applicable. We must always remember the below fundamental ground rules of such counseling: Have an unbiased approach….No pre-conceived notions. (Advice the team member also of the same) Discuss only on the basis of facts & figures and not hearsay. Highlight the exact instances where the team member’s approach has been an aberration. Listen to the member’s point of view and understand the reason for the member’s approach. Explain to the member how the observed behavior conflicts with acceptable / required practices, procedures or philosophy. Describe the bigger picture in a holistic approach. Explain the negative impact of the member’s approach on overall team camaraderie. If not corrected, clearly elucidate that this might impact member’s performance appraisal / career progression. Provide realistic time for the member to rectify oneself. Strictly avoid personal criticism. The subject must be dealt throughout in a professional manner. The member must be made aware that all discussions are being recorded.
Freedom of action of individual members must not conflict with the team‟s action but must be synchronized with it. For true success, we must always remember Mr. A.G. Gardiner who had Every team in member hasRule a defined & responsibility ensure that all members are highlighted “On The Of The role Road” that you may and havewe to must submit to a curtailment of private guided perform per theenjoy requirement. liberty and in order that as you may a social order which makes your liberty a reality.
By- Piyush Govil PMP®
Project Management – Ethics versus Business Interests
Project Manager’s state of dilemma Save Trees, Save Earth
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About PMI North India Chapter Offering and Benefits Offerings Regular Corporate Knowledge sharing events.
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Professional Development PM often have to move out of their comfort zone w.r.t. local laws and customs, while executing international projects. Different countries have ambiguous and contradicting ways of conducting business - which leads to the question “What is the ethical or right thing to do?” Sometimes a practice that is permissible in the foreign country may not be the practice at home. Questions like - "Will making a payment to a foreign government official to obtain permits, licenses or police protection be seen as a bribe or just “facilitating” and “expediting” to get things done?" - Often creates conflict within a Project Manager's mind. What should be the guidelines for a project oriented organization to follow as best practices within the ethical parameters and without affecting the business prospects? - Kumar Saurabh - PMP® Send your answer to pminicmag@pminorthindia.org
Editorial Team
Piyush Govil
Manoj Gupta
Kumar Saurabh
Nirmallya Kar
Felix George
G. Ravi
Editorial Team welcomes Articles, Case Studies, and white papers, last but not least SUGGESTIONS, IDEAS for Next issue… Kindly submit at piyush.govil@pminorthindia.org Or pminicmag@pminorthindia.org
PMI North India Chapter http://pminorthindia.org pminicmag@pminorthindia.org Save Trees, Save Earth
Editorial Team welcomes Articles, Case Studies, white
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